Arteta on ‘very impressive’ Nwaneri | News

We inflicted only Brentford’s second home defeat all season on Wednesday, and after the game Mikel Arteta said it was the perfect way to kick off 2025.

After falling behind to Bryan Mbeumo’s, Arteta’s side came roaring back to make it four wins on the bounce, and extend our unbeaten streak to 11 matches.

“It’s a really tough place to come for the first game of the year, and especially when you go a goal down,” the boss said afterwards. “But I think we showed a lot of composure, a lot of desire, a lot of attitude to turn the result around, to make things happen, to take the initiative. I think we deserved to win the game.”

The manager made four changes for the match, with players unavailable for illness and injury, but he was delighted with how his team responded, including 17-year-old Ethan Nwaneri making his first league start, back at the venue where he became our youngest ever player as a sub three seasons ago.

“The game became very difficult from yesterday because, again, we lost some players and had certain issues around the camp. We had to deal with that, we made some changes, Ethan [Nwaneri] making his Premier League debut, anyone that you put there, [they had the] right attitude, right level of performance and that sustains the level of the team.

“Ethan’s played here before, so that’s a nice story, to get back to this one, I think he was really composed, really determined, taking risks, taking initiative. Very impressive.”

The game marked the halfway stage of the Premier League season, so how does the boss sum up the campaign so far, with 19 of our 38 fixtures played?

“Yes it’s good, we’ve been through a lot and the team had to deal with a lot of circumstances, probably that we never expected and they’re still performing at the highest level, very consistently. We want to be better, we could’ve been better, especially just with small margins but I think the team is in the right path.”